The bad?

The friendly AI IS extremely irritating at times. If you tell them to take cover, they do. But they also barely shoot anything in that mode. If you tell them to lay fire on something, they do. But they leave cover to do it. So you have to keep switching back and forth, and for me that is annoying. Luckily, through about 90% of the game you can really just tell your team to sit in a corner while you do all of the work.

Also, the game can be INSANELY difficult. I think the cover system is fine as long as you realize that you don’t often have to use it. This isn’t Gears of War, and simply straifing in aim mode around corners will get the job done. When the time came to actually use the cover system it kicked in and I had no trouble. Unfortunately, the odds in most battles are so stacked against you that cover or no cover you are going to get hit anyway. Bottom line here is that you will lose here. A lot.

The things the game did REALLY well: The coop in this game is the best in any game, hands down. Instead of just tacking on coop where one player simply becomes the other guy in the story and thats that, they actually took the time to let the player playing Lynch experience all of the stuff Lynch experiences in the story. For instance, when Lynch freaks out and starts firing on innocents (no spoiler here, this is in all of the previews), the Lynch player sees all innocents as cops just like Lynch says. It is a really neat touch and does a lot to make the characters feel more real. I see some reviewers knocking this game for not having online coop but that is just douchebaggy reviewing. Playing with a stranger (worse, a stranger from the XBox Live community) is not appropriate for a game with this level of story depth.

The combat is satisfying. The game does big huge set piece battles greatly, and that is what you get for 8 hours.

The multiplayer is a lot of fun when xbox live lets it be that way. The biggest drawback here as with EVERY xbox live title is the xbox live community. Quitters, whiners, racists, and idiots can and will be found on every server. That aside: The coop portion of the heists can be really challenging (in a fun way). One wrong move can leave a dead teammate, and a dead teammate means one more especially tough cop to deal with. Then after the heist you have to constantly be watching your back for traitors. It is tense, it is exciting, and it works.

Bottom line: The level design and story in this title is unparalleled. But you must remember, this isn’t Gears. Gears took huge steps in making the third person shooter a more tactical experience. Kane and Lynch is an oldschool action oriented third person shooter. Playing it with that in mind (and on easy mode if you aren’t into being as frustrated as you get when you are playing Prince of Persia) then you simply can NOT have a bad time playing this game.